Saturday, October 11, 2008

We found our first genuine Redneck truck

Clearing space for an extra goat pasture




Our goats are pregnant, and they are due to produce their kids in the next few weeks. We live on 6 acres, and most of that land is overgrown so i decided it was time to clear some extra space so we can expand the goat pasture.


First thing I found was a machete embedded in one of the trees.


The undergrowth is pretty thick.


Trash everywhere.


... including this old Sharp radio.


Can you see the truck yet?


Here it is!

It's going to take a little while before I can excavate the entire truck. For a start it is well ensconsed in the undergrowth. But also, it's about 10 feet way from the intended pasture.

As I look around, I see that there seem to be wheels scattered as far as 100 feet from the truck. I doubt there's anything usable in the truck anyway, but it looks like it has been dismantled and strewn around.

Over the last 4 years I have extracted numerous car jacks, tyres, wheels, chairs and countless other items of trash. But we have around 3 acres of overgrown land like that shown in the pictures above. Frankly, we are a little scared of what we might find...

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Captivate 4 beta announced

Adobe Captivate 4 BETA coming soon


Adobe has been showing sneak peeks of Adobe Captivate 4 under NDA for a while. Now it looks like a public beta is about to open. Head over to Silke Fleischer's blog to sign up for the beta. Don't miss your chance to be part of the evolution of Captivate into a must-have eLearning applicaiton.

Friday, August 01, 2008

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Anthropologist Michael Wesch explores the virus that is YouTube


This video, built on a presentation given to the Library of Congress by Michael Wesh explores the success of YouTube from a cultural perspective. The video is almost an hour long, so go get a cup of coffee or some cold beer, and pull up a comfortable chair!



The presentation is very compelling. It takes the viewer through the evolution of YouTube and the user-created content that is solidifying remote communities across the world.

With enough video uploaded daily to fill almost 400 24/7 channels, it's hard to comprehend the sheer scale of YouTube. Put it another way - in 6 months, the YouTube community uploaded as much video as 3 TV stations could present for over 40 years, non-stop, 24 hours a day.

If you think YouTube is just about skateboarding bulldogs, ripped-off music videos and videos of idiots wheelying their motorcycles into the back of cars, then you should watch this video from Michael. If you are not touched by the shared emotion towards the end, then you are even more heartless than me :-)

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Good instructional design helps us catch the 'moonwalking bear'

Tom Kuhlmann shares his thoughts on the moonwalking bear


Check out this YouTube video. It's an interesting experiment on perception, or on focus, or on creative misdirection. Once you've seen this you should know better how stage magicians and card sharps fool you :-)



Now see what Tom Kulmann has to say about it.

He tells us that creative Instructional Designers can have a powerful effect in engaging their learners and ensuring they focus on the learning points of their instruction.

But I think he fails to give enough importance to the opposite message - if you are careless you can make sure your learners totally fail to see the important information, no matter how obvious it is.

Regardless, the video is a very useful piece of instruction in its own right, proving that video continues to be a powerful instructional tool.

What I want to know is how many people see the bear even with the instruction to count the passes. More intriguing - how many would see the bear without the deliberate misdirection of the instructions.

Online Reading - is it literacy?

The New York Times has an interesting discussion on the effect of the Internet on literacy skills


The article quotes various academics as stating that frequent book readers have better vocabulary and comprehension skills. They dismiss the Internet as a place for developing literacy skills.

And yet our children are doing more of their reading on the Internet than ever before.

More significantly, when they go to work, our children are going to have to be highly 'Internet literate', and skilled at what I call 'search and sift': they are going to need to be able to search the internet, and draw useful and accurate information from the millions of informative, intelligent, and often misinformative and poorly researched web pages. They are going to need to be able to spot the reliable and discard the garbage.

When he was in seventh grade, Hunter was one of 89 students who participated in a study comparing performance on traditional state reading tests with a specially designed Internet reading test. Hunter, who scored in the lowest 10 percent on the traditional test, spent 12 weeks learning how to use the Web for a science class before taking the Internet test. It was composed of three sets of directions asking the students to search for information online, determine which sites were reliable and explain their reasoning.

Hunter scored in the top quartile. In fact, about a third of the students in the study, led by Professor Leu, scored below average on traditional reading tests but did well on the Internet assessment.


Those skilled at 'search and sift' are going to become valuable employees, regardless of their skill at traditional literacy and comprehension tests. But for the most part, few people seem to recognise the value of teaching our children how to navigate the shark-infested waters of the Internet:-

Some simply argue that reading on the Internet is not something that needs to be tested — or taught.
“Nobody has taught a single kid to text message,” said Carol Jago of the National Council of Teachers of English and a member of the testing guidelines committee. “Kids are smart. When they want to do something, schools don’t have to get involved.”

Michael L. Kamil, a professor of education at Stanford who lobbied for an Internet component as chairman of the reading test guidelines committee, disagreed. Students “are going to grow up having to be highly competent on the Internet,” he said. “There’s no reason to make them discover how to be highly competent if we can teach them.”


I think that Internet Literacy is going to be much more important in the future than 'traditional' literacy. Read the full article here

Thursday, June 12, 2008

100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner

CollegeAtHome.com has a nice article from Christina Laun

100 tools, split into groups by learning style
The tools list is broken in to 3 major groups (representing 3 learning styles) and numerous subgroups.

Visual Learners Mind Mapping
• Charting and Diagrams
• Videos and Photos
• Auditory Learners Podcasts

Presentation Tools
• Audio Tools
• Text Readers
• Audio Books

Kinesthetic Learners Note Taking
• Tools
• Bookmarking
• Interaction
• Collaboration

There's a lot of familiar tools in there, but many I've never heard of too. I'll not spoil the article - go read it for yourself if you want to know more ;-)

Friday, May 30, 2008

Google Android Demos

Google Maps and Pacman. Whoodathunk


Google have been demoing Android. Videos and pictures posted here. The demos show a lot of progress, and impressive speed.

It looks like Android has taken a lot of lessons from the iPhone. We are going to have some great new devices over the next couple of years as everyone finally gets into developing advanced touchscreen interfaces.









Thursday, May 01, 2008

Adobe Open Screen Project

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment, taking advantage of Adobe Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR®



Adobe announced today a new project aimed at creating a single unified runtime for Flash, so that developers can create single-source solutions for PC, Mac, Linux, mobile phone, PDA, Chumby and more.

This is exciting news for Flash/Flex/AIR developers. Finally I can start to show people that the funny interactive eLearning content really IS viable for mobile devices. And with single-source development, this should be a breeze for developers.

Read more here:-

http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/04/the_open_screen_project.html
http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/05/adobe-announces-open-screen-project-pcs.html
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/faq/
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

eLearning Guild - Florida

mLearning - Judy Brown




www.mlearnopedia.com
www.judybrown.com

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Alex Tokman talks about the Microvision Pico Projector

LegacyCaptivateLoader: dealing with pre-existing scripts in your Captivate SWF

New: LegacyCaptivateLoader class for Flash lets you embed Captivate in Flash and communicate between them


Pipwerks has published a great article that addresses some issues that plague Captivate users who need a little extra control and customisation.

"Many of us use a Flash-based course interface (a.k.a. ‘player’) to load Captivate SWFs and other content. A well-known stumbling block for this kind of ‘loaded SWF’ approach has been Captivate’s lack of ActionScript support — Captivate won’t allow a user to add a simple line of custom ActionScript anywhere. This means that Captivate does not natively support direct SWF-to-SWF communication.

Here’s a common scenario where this might be a problem:

A developer wants to load a Captivate SWF into a ‘player’ SWF. She wants the Captivate SWF to automatically unload when it’s done playing. To do this, she’d simply like the Captivate SWF to call an ActionScript function named “unloadMe()” at the end of the movie.

Since Captivate doesn’t support custom ActionScript, this seemingly innocent bit of scripting can’t be done… at least not natively."


Read the whole article here.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Adobe merges business units serving PCs, mobile

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) said on Monday it was putting under one roof businesses selling software for computers, phones and consumer electronics to make them run on a single technology platform. "


The announcement is part of a series of management restructuring moves Adobe is making following the planned retirement of two long-time executives, effective May 1. A spokeswoman said no employee job losses would result.
The move represents the further consolidation of its 2005 Macromedia acquisition with the broader Adobe organization while also recognizing the growing convergence of once-distinct software and the need for it to run across a range of devices.
Read more here on Yahoo News.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Opera Mini 4.1 Beta

Opera has released the beta version 4.1 of their super Opera Mini browser for mobile devices


better, faster stronger ...


The native browser for Nokia devices is already pretty good - it's based on the same WebKit foundation that has also the foundation of Apple's Safari browser used by Mac and iPhone. But I really like Opera Mini - it's very fast, by virtue of the use of Opera's proxy server and some sweet compression that reduces the size of the download for most web pages.

New features include:-

  • up to 50% speed improvements,
  • auto-complete feature for URLs
  • the ability to search for specific words within a page (something I've long missed on my mobile browsers!)
  • a new file manager for easy access to your system when uploading and downloading files..

Opera Mini is a Java application, so should run on most devices that support Java. This version now works on Blackberries too.

If you haven't tried Opera Mini yet, then you should try this version because it adds desktop-like speed to your mobile browsing, even on slower EDGE connections.

,,


Friday, April 04, 2008

European eLearning Summit

Nottingham University, Nottingham, England


19th to 21st August, 2008

The European eLearning Summit (EeLS) will take place over the period 19th to 21st August. The summit venue is the East Midlands Conference Centre, located at Nottingham University, Nottingham, England.

Built on the history of the popular EuroTAAC Authorware and eLearning conference, EeLS is bigger and better than ever before. With quality presentations from eLearning professionals sourced from across Europe, EeLS has detailed and up-to-date information useful to all eLearning professionals, from Educational Designers and Developers, through to managers, educators and corporate planners.

This year, EeLS has been sponsored by Adobe and by the eLEarning Guild. We are looking forward to an amazing conference with all things eLearning from Toolbook on the iPod through to Captivate bootstrapping!

There is a special 20% discount for eLearning Guild members too.

Pico-projectors Almost Ready for Prime Time

Brighthand reviews tiny mobile projectors at CTIA



Texas Instruments


Microvision

Brighthand has a nice review of Pico Projectors (pocket-sized projectors) as shown at CTIA this week.
Sounds like Microvision has the edge right now with it's super-tiny laser projector. Microvision tell me that the projector can give up to a 100 inch diagonal screen, and can fit in a cell-phone sized device. Watch out for cellphones with these tinyh projectors in 2009.

Quote of the year so far

M-learning will change pedagogy by making 24/7 mobile accessibility important.


From the Mobile Learning Blog

“M-learning will change pedagogy by making 24/7 mobile accessibility important. It is a matter of time before m-learning reaches the market-driven stage of the product life cycle.
Advances in mobile networks, such as broadband wireless systems will change education pedagogy and supporting software forever. Since mobile technology is more reliable in most of the world, especially the third world, it will become the norm across continents”.

I agree!!! Go to the mLearning Blog to read more about *Australia's* perspective on mLearning.

eLearning Guild Annual Gathering

The eLarning Guild's Annual Gathering starts April 14th


And I'll be there!

I need to find out all I can about Wikis, PodCasting, corporate communities and more. Plus I'm trying real hard to learn Flex right now, so I'll be hanging around anybody who can make sense of it for me :-)

Microvision Features Advanced Pico Projector Prototypes at CTIA Wireless 2008

REDMOND, Wash., Mar 31, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- At CTIA Wireless 2008, Microvision (NASDAQ:MVIS), a leader in the development of ultra-miniature projection display and image capture technology for mobile devices will demonstrate advanced pico projector prototypes enabled by the company's PicoP(TM)- display engine. Microvision expects the PicoP will first be incorporated as a handheld accessory product that can connect to multiple consumer devices to project large, vibrant color images onto any surface. Additionally, the Company is designing PicoP to meet the size and power requirements necessary to allow it to be integrated inside cell phones and other consumer devices.
"Consumers want a much better viewing experience than they currently get from their small mobile device displays," stated Alexander Tokman, Microvision President and CEO. "PicoP enabled devices are expected to let consumers project and share large, high-resolution, color-rich images onto any surface from devices such as cell phones, PDA's, laptops, portable DVD players and hand-held gaming devices. Whether projecting TV, digital photos, movies, presentation slides or content from internet browsing to social networking, we are confident that PicoP enabled devices can deliver outstanding experiences to consumers and should soon be some of the hottest new products on the market."

At the Microvision booth #4411, the company is featuring:

SHOW(TM), an advanced prototype of a PDA-sized, battery-powered, 'plug-and-play' pico projector. Microvision's stand-alone pico projector prototype connects directly to laptops, mobile phones, portable media players (PMPs), digital cameras and other mobile devices to project large, high-resolution images and video onto any surface. The projected display is always in focus and can range anywhere from 8 inches (20 cm) to 100 inches (2.5 m) in size depending upon the ambient lightning conditions. A production version of an accessory device is expected to offer approximately 2.5 hours of continuous battery life, sufficient to watch a full-length movie without a need for recharging.

In addition to the public demonstration of the SHOW accessory prototype, Microvision plans to demonstrate in private to select customers the completion of the first embedded PicoP into a fully-functioning, prototype mobile device. Motorola and Microvision are working together to demonstrate this prototype, project market demand, and gauge consumer interest and requirements.

Whether designed as an accessory device, like the SHOW prototype, or embedded directly into a cell phone, Microvision stated that PicoP-enabled devices can project a widescreen, WVGA (848 X 480 pixels), DVD-quality image -- offering a very different experience from the tiny 2-inch display solutions available today on various portable devices. Designed for viewing high-quality projected information in a variety of controlled lighting environments, the PicoP projection angle is nearly twice that of many competing products, leading to an image that is more than 3 times the size for the same projection distance. This, coupled with the always in focus operation, and higher perceived brightness enables PicoP to deliver a compelling and user-friendly experience.

According to Microvision the PicoP display engine has already attracted the interest of numerous device manufacturers, carriers and content providers. Additionally, Microvision has recently announced a variety of agreements with global supply chain partners who are expected to support high-volume production of the PicoP display engine, as well as integration of the PicoP display engine into commercial products.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Adobe offers free web conferencing with Adobe BRIO

Adobe has announced free conferencing for up to 4 people


from CS3: The Creative License Podcast Series

Adobe is giving free podcasts for CS3 on the creativesuite web site.

This week's episode takes a look at the NEW Adobe BRIO service which is the code name for a new FREE version of Acrobat Connect. BRIO allows you to host your own web conferences with up to 3 people including screen sharing, chat, VoIP and webcam.

Direct download: podcast-AC-BRIO.mp4



You can get more informaion about BRIO from Adobe Labs

Thursday, December 13, 2007

A sense of scale

Ever think you are really important?


Or do you think you are rather small and unimportant?

Check out this video for a real sense of scale ...